When treating hair on a person's head with chemicals such as dyes, relaxers, setting lotions, and other chemicals to bring about desired results in the hair it is necessary that all portions of the hair to be treated are contacted by the chemical. In the past such treatments have been effected by manually isolating a particular section of the hair on the person's head and treating that section with the chemical. Then a second section is manually isolated and treated, and so on until the entire head of hair has been treated.
This manual method of hair treatment has certain disadvantages. It takes great care to be sure that all areas are treated, since the treated and untreated areas are not always readily distinguishable. If areas are missed, the result is a blotchy effect. In order to avoid the blotchy effect, great care has been necessitated to be sure that all areas are adequately covered, requiring inordinate amounts of time. Additionally, many chemical treatments are to remain on the hair for a certain period of time and then be washed out. In the manual method, the sections treated early are sometimes ready to be washed out before the entire head has been treated. This, of course, raises many problems for the hairdresser.
Also, when treating hair with chemicals, particularly when coloring the hair, it is necessary to be sure that the chemicals reach the hair roots at the scalp. In the manual sectioning method, it is difficult to cause the chemicals to penetrate all the way to the roots, particularly if too large a section of hair is being treated at any given time.
It is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,394,714 to Kirwan to use a hair gathering device in which a comb has two spaced-apart sets of teeth and a gauge member transversely mountable on the teeth to be used to isolate sections of hair in order to wrap the hair around a roller or curler. The device, however, does not section the hair at the scalp line, which is necessary in order to properly section the hair for application of hair coloring and other treating chemicals. Furthermore, the Kirwan device does not provide enough hair sections of suitable size for use in applying chemicals.
The present invention contemplates a sectioning device in which a plurality of finger members are arranged in a comb-like pattern and are individually movable out of the way, one at a time in order to expose sections of hair between the finger members for chemical treatment. It is known from U.S. Pat. No. 792,887 to Erstling and U.S. Pat. No. 1,465,519 to Howard to provide combs in which the teeth are engageable together, and pivotable with respect to one another in order to provide access to the inside faces of the teeth for easy cleaning. These patents, however, do not teach the art how to make or use movable finger members in order to section the hair for chemical treatments.
Accordingly there is a need in the art for a hair sectioning tool which will divide the hair on a person's head into sections at the scalp line and which is then manipulable to expose the sections one by one to the hairdresser for chemical treatment of all the hair in the section.